of some mystical function taking place between subject and object takes a more elaborate form. I refer to the myths of transformation and metempsychosis.

There is an ancient Egyptian story of the hero Bata, which tells how, being betrayed by his wife, who had become the king's mistress, he is put to death by her machinations. Bata's brother, however, restores him to life in the form of a great bull possessing all the sacred marks. In this form, he is still able to make himself known to his wife, who thereupon asks a boon of the king in the shape of the bull's liver to eat. As the bull is slain two drops of his blood are splashed upon the door-posts of the king's house, where, forthwith, two mighty persea trees begin to grow. One of these trees accuses the king's mistress of her crimes, explaining, “I am Bata, I am living still, I have transformed myself." Whereupon she persuades the king to cut the trees down: but while she stands watching a splinter flies off, and, entering her mouth, renders her pregnant. In due time she gives birth to a son. This is none other than a new manifestation of Bata, who eventually succeeds to the throne, and has a reckoning with the woman who has been both his wife, his mother, and the instigator of his various transformations. I will not attempt to deal fully with the subtle symbolism of this myth, since its main features are enough for my purpose. It is clear that Bata is less an organized personality than a transforming and fertilizing essence.

The state of subject-object identity has become linked up to an heroic figure, whose magical superiority to the disasters brought upon him by his wife is derived from his power of transforming himself as the occasion demands. Let us examine the myth from this point of view.

It matters little whether we relate it to a single individual or to a tribe, since if it has any validity at all, a myth must depict a typical vital process which, according to their respective curves, is equally representative for both cases. The dramatis personae might be represented then as follows. The hero Bata personifies the positive, progressive libido, while the wife with whom his whole destiny is so intimately joined is the negative, regressive tendency. It is the conflict between this fundamental pair of opposites which brings about the necessity, and, at the same time, provides the energy for the transforming process. The brother, who restores the hero to life in the shape of the bull, would personify the mediating function of the will which works towards a reconciliation of the opposites.

As with Kundry in the Parsifal myth, the woman beautifully embodies the ambivalent negative principle which, through its efforts to destroy

the positive antithesis, provides the very means for the latter's transformation and re-birth. The sacred bull is the first step in the process. As in the Europa myth, the bull is frequently identified with supreme, godlike power. To the idea of fecundity it links associations of immense energy and power. His overpowering reserves of energy, though normally latent, may suddenly be loosed with terrifying force. Hence, the bull is a supreme expression of the positive, masculine principle of power.

It is, however, an extreme and unilateral phase. Proportion and synthesis demand a corresponding manifestation of the more stable and passive feminine principle. Therefore the transformation into the two guardian trees is the next step. Having experienced to the full the two antithetic libido principles, the time becomes ripe for the further transformation of the hero, whose magical re-birth takes place in the womb of that same figure of destiny who had consistently aimed at his destruction. Space forbids a more adequate treatment of the psychological content of the myth, since the theme I am trying to develop is the question of the psychological significance of the subject-object identity which is an underlying pre-condition of all such formations.

I referred just now, to the selective operation of this principle, by which certain objects bearing particular ancestral associations became libido-symbols. It will be evident, I think, that a mind guided by purely rational or utilitarian considerations would never have selected such objects as the bull or the tree as objects of especial veneration. We may conclude, therefore, that the prelogical psyche has a totally different attitude to life from that of rational consciousness. The selective principle of the prelogical psyche does not apparently select objects on any rational grounds. It would seem as though an a priori relation of identity were established, purely because an essential character of the object corresponded in a vivid way to a specific need or urgency of the subject. Specific symbols, therefore, point to the existence of specific psychological needs which can be realized only by a feeling-into relation with specific objects. From this point of view certain selected objects of the environment become, as it were, functions of the psyche, since there is a relation of interdependence between subject and symbolified object which can only be described as a process of energy. That is to say, when the phase of individual or racial development arrives which demands the dominating, bull-like attitude, the subject-object relation to the bull becomes identified with the main racial or individual complex. Thus the natural significance of the bull becomes enormously enhanced, finally developing into a sacred and revered symbol. The winged bulls of the

Assyrian Empire are a perfect illustration of this process. When, on the other hand, the need of stable and well-rooted consolidation becomes paramount, the introverted symbol of the tree will acquire magical significance. This whole conception of a process of energy between subject and object, whereby certain objects of the environment come to operate as functions of the psyche, is in striking harmony with certain recent biological views.

In a lecture on the Fundamental Conceptions of Biology, delivered at King's College last February, Dr J. S. Haldane formulated a biological standpoint of relativity which entirely accords with the thesis I am here to support. He says: "From the biological standpoint organism and biological environment, structure and activity of structure, parts and other parts, are not things separable in thought from one another, but existing only in their relations. If we attempt to separate them from one another, they become from the biological standpoint just as meaningless as is motion or the passage of time in an empty universe." In another place he says: "Structure depends on environment and environment on structure; and if we attempt to separate living structure from its active environment we simply fail. Form, composition, activity and environment are inseparably bound up together." He goes even further and declares: "The environment is not something outside of life, and acting on it from without. Nor is life something localized within the living structure of an organism. Life is an organic whole without spatial boundaries, and hence cannot be localized definitely. What we can localize in relation to one another are only its manifestations, such as special organic structures or aspects of living activity. There is no more warrant for localizing life within the structure of an organism, than for localizing consciousness in the brain."

Dr Haldane also perceives that if we adopt an attitude of relativity in our biological or psychological conceptions we are immediately faced with the question of the teleological or purposive character of living processes. "If," he remarks, "we attempt to resolve the life of an organism into a number of separate processes we reach no intelligible result....The wholeness in the phenomena of life is not merely externally imposed, as in the case of a machine; and if we neglect the inherent element of wholeness we are also neglecting life itself....By studying the responses of renal excretion, of respiration, of circulation, of blood composition, of the nervous system, and of every other organ and tissue in the body, to changes in environment, we can discover how each organ or tissue plays its part in life as a whole, but if we leave out of account life as a whole

because this consideration savours of teleology1, we reach nothing but an unintelligible jumble of unconnected observations. On this point I most emphatically mean what I say."

I have quoted Dr Haldane's words at some length, because the point of view I am trying to outline is essentially the same, and carries, as you see, far-reaching, philosophic implications. These implications go right down to the fundamental assumptions upon which the physical sciences rest. This, however, is too large a subject to enter upon in this paper. I will, therefore, confine the issue to two considerations. In the first place Dr Haldane postulates an unanalysable relation between the living organism and its environment, which is in striking harmony with LévyBruhl's concept, "Participation mystique." Secondly, he is prepared to face the whole teleological problem as a necessary factor in the study of vital phenomena.

I would like at this point to discuss the collective representations of the primitive from the point of view of their teleological value.

Primitive psychology is orientated chiefly by motives of fear. Tibullus said, "primum in mundo fecit deus timorem," and in saying this he not only asserts fear to be the commanding force of the primeval world, but suggests that it is also closely identified with creative energy itself. It is impossible to study the mind of primitive races without being profoundly impressed by the way in which fear dominates their whole mentality. Associations of fear cling to everything that is unfamiliar or unknown. It would, therefore, follow that the primitive's relation to objects that are known, and have become interwoven by long habit and ancestral veneration into their lives, will acquire an enhanced or magical significance. Thus, in certain primitive languages objects of habitual use have a gender denoting ‘alive,' known as the suffix of the 'thing living.' The whole theory of mystical participation involves a process by which subjective contents are projected into or merged with objects of the environment. This process is rooted in the magical importance of the subject, which in the primitive means, of course, the group or tribe. By this projection of the subject into the environment a psychological fortification is created, which is able to withstand the inroads of the unfamiliar.

In the absence, then, of an objective function of cognition, the primitive psyche, through ages of instinctual adaptation, has elaborated a system of collective representations which, operating without thought or volition, serve to bring about a magical reinforcement of the subject

1 The italics are mine.

in a world governed by fear. This animation of objects by projection of subjective contents has been called animism. The primitive lives in a world of experience that is spontaneously blessed or banned by his own psychology. Undistracted by any of the problems which harass our rational or objective consciousness, his perceptions of what, in reality, are psychological transactions is extraordinarily acute. His perception of souls in the things around him, his sense of invisible forces at work, of the spirits of the dead, etc. are sensitive figurative statements of the psychological state of affairs. We are therefore entitled, I think, to draw the conclusion that this mythological activity of the prelogical psyche is concerned, not with objective facts per se, but rather with the shaping of attitude or behaviour towards external events. An harmonious attitude is often the crucial factor in commanding a situation, and a savage who is able to confront experience, equipped with a system of representations by which events are, as it were, already self-explained, will have an instinctual relation to the situation which carries the guarantee of his whole ancestral lineage.

The same teleological function may be noticed very clearly in many of the fertility rites. In the Panjab, for instance, the following method of obtaining issue is practised. "On the night of the feast of Diwalialways a night in the moonless half of the month-the husband draws water at seven different wells in an earthen pot, and places in the water leaves plucked from seven different sacred trees. He brings the pot to his wife at a spot where four cross-roads meet. She must bathe herself with the water unseen by anybody, and then put on new clothes, discarding her old ones." There are many other equally suggestive rites, but space forbids me to expand unduly this aspect of my theme. A brief analysis of this example must, therefore, suffice. The numbers seven and four figure so persistently in myth and dream formations, that we are almost permitted to infer a basic psychic structure or pattern corresponding to these numerical principles. Seven is of course the number associated with the legends of creation, and four, through its identification with the four quarters of the globe is linked up to the idea of orientation and individual differentiation. Thus two fundamental psychological principles are set as the ground-work of this fertility rite. Then the water from the seven wells with the leaves from the seven trees are clearly the expression of a mystical identification with the fertilizing water and the venerable fruit of the earth. The baptism at the crossroads suggests a fresh merging or contact with the energies of life at a spot pregnant with the notion of new beginnings. The donning of new